Chapter 4
At one in the morning, a thread was posted to the Explorers' Board, an anonymous bulletin board.
'【Verification】Is Shin-san's Beginner Course the Real Deal? A Thread Where the Strategy Group Seriously Investigates It'
【1: The course that clip came from. People have dismissed it as 'just plain,' but something about it bothers me. I've watched all seven archives. I'm going to investigate the remarks that caught my attention, one by one】
【4: You're seriously too bored】
【7: >>1 I watched it too. The third one, right? "Don't walk along the walls in the Grand Corridor on the third floor." That's the exact opposite of what the wiki says】
【9: Huh? Hugging the walls is the only choice in the Grand Corridor. We've been told for twenty years that you'll get surrounded in the center】
【12: The course's argument is this: "The monsters in the Grand Corridor hide in the seams between the ceiling and the walls. Hugging the walls means voluntarily walking directly beneath them. If you stay closer to the center, you can get clear with half a step no matter which way they leap"】
【15: The reasoning checks out. But that's not enough evidence to overturn twenty years of accepted wisdom】
【23: I checked it against the Association's public accident database. Of the 186 deaths and serious injuries in the third-floor Grand Corridor over the past ten years, 152 have a recorded location—and 129 of those occurred along the walls】
【24: Huh?】
【25: That's over eighty percent】
【31: Hey, wait. So for twenty years, we've been calling the more dangerous route the "safe route"?】
The mood of the thread changed at that point.
The mockery vanished, replaced by the obsessive fervor characteristic of the strategy group.
The investigation continued all night. A medically trained poster verified that the first lesson's advice on how to stand was more accurate as an explanation of postural sway than a textbook. A current C-ranker tested the sixth lesson's "how to retreat" in a training area and reported, complete with measurement data, that the number of falls while retreating had been cut in half.
【88: Can I state the conclusion? This course isn't merely "correct." It's too correct. You can't get this level of precision from personal experience alone. How many hundreds of death reports would you have to read to reach this conclusion?】
【90: So we're back to the original question. —What is this old guy?】
【93: His self-introduction is just "I used to be a training coach. ...I used to be." He never says who he trained or where】
【95: I think his voice sounds familiar, and it's keeping me awake】
◇
As for me, my day was peaceful as ever.
I cooked rice, leafed through my notebooks, and prepared for the night's stream. It was day eight of my wholesome unemployed life.
Everything was peaceful except the numbers. The channel had passed four thousand subscribers by morning, reached six thousand at noon, and hit ten thousand by evening. The first archive alone had surpassed fifty thousand views.
My prediction that they'd be bored by tomorrow and return to the usual classroom kept being proven spectacularly wrong. I'd already given up on the glitch theory. That left only one possible explanation.
"Maybe Hina-chan promoted it?"
I had thought she was a conscientious girl, but she'd gone a little overboard. I'd have to thank her next time.
That night, when I pressed the start-streaming button, the viewer count passed 【2,000】 within ten seconds.
【I'm here】
【It's real】
【I came from the verification thread】
【Is it true the wiki's being rewritten?】
Before I could even open my mouth, the comment section was a flood. I wished they'd at least let me say hello.
"Good evening, I'm Shin. There seem to be a lot of first-time viewers, so let me say the usual thing. This is a course for beginners. I won't be covering flashy techniques or talking about the strongest gear. It's dull. Probably shockingly dull."
【We know】
【That's what we came to hear】
"Lesson Eight. Today, I'll talk about 'whether to keep your potion on the right or left side of your waist.'"
【Huh?】
【That's too dull】
【That's what you're focusing on!?】
【Everyone in the thread, this is business as usual】
What was wrong with business as usual? As always, I put the contents of my notebooks into words.
"Starting with the conclusion, keep it on the side of your waist opposite your dominant hand, toward the front of your body. There are three reasons. First—the kind of situation in which you need a potion is usually one in which your dominant arm is already out of commission."
You can't pull a stopper with your dominant hand while it's still gripping a sword. So if the potion is somewhere you can't pull it out with your other hand, it's as good as not having one at all.
"Second. If you carry it on your back, it'll break when you fall. Explorers fall forward while keeping watch, but when they fall backward, they're completely unprepared."
"Third. And this is the most important one—people on the verge of death easily get their right and left mixed up."
That's why it should always be in the same place. Somewhere your hand can reach without thinking. At an angle where you can catch it against the belt and pull it free even if your fingers are trembling. All of that is part of deciding where to keep it.
I spent fifteen minutes talking about that alone.
For the first three minutes, the comment section was a barrage of 【Dull】 comments, but around the five-minute mark, the flow changed.
【I've been an explorer for six years, but I kept my medicine in my bag】
【A bag will get you killed. My partner had one arm mangled because of that】
【When you said people on the verge of death mix up right and left, I got chills. That was me last week】
【I don't know how to put it. I can feel the number of corpses behind every single piece of reasoning in this course】
【I just moved mine to my belt. Where do I pay my tuition?】
Then a comment from a familiar name desperately made its way through the torrent.
【Teacher, I'm learning so much again today! Um, and, well, there are so many more viewers now...】
"Ah, yeah. Hina-chan."
I sat up a little straighter and turned toward the microphone. If I was going to say it, now was the time.
"You promoted it for me, didn't you? Thank you."
The comment section fell silent for one second.
【LOL】
【Promotion LOL】
【That's not what happened】
【It was Hina-chan's fault, but not Hina-chan herself】
【Someone explain the situation to this old man】
【N-no, Teacher! It wasn't me...! Well, maybe I was the one who set it off, but...!】
I didn't really understand what was going on, but the comment section was lively as ever.
"Huh? ...Well, never mind. That's all for today."
◇
As midnight approached, an editing war began on the dungeon-clearing wiki's page for "Third Floor: Grand Corridor."
The verification thread's users replaced the "wall-hugging recommended" entry, which had been upheld for twenty years, with a version citing accident data. Ten minutes later, a veteran editor reverted it. The reason field contained one sentence: "Source is a personal stream. No reliability."
After three reversions, the verification team compiled its comparison with the Association's database into a table and carried out yet another revision. At four in the morning, the administrator finally issued a ruling.
'There is no reason to reject it, given the data presented. Revision approved.'
By sunrise, the recommended route through the third-floor Grand Corridor had been changed to "closer to the center"—and for the first time in the history of the dungeon-clearing wiki, the name of a personal stream appeared in its source field.
【Source: 'Shin-san's Beginner Dungeon Course,' Episode Three】
At the end of the approval comment, the administrator added a single line.
'If something with a lower death rate than the accepted wisdom appears, then from now on, that is what we will call the accepted wisdom.'
◇
That same morning. Genbu headquarters, the chairman's office on the top floor.
"—Chairman. We have a report from the research team regarding that course."
The head of the research team stood there with a bundle of documents in his arms, his face showing the effects of an all-nighter. The wiki revision. The fervor of the verification thread. And the possibility that the course's theoretical precision surpassed the company's new-hire training program.
Togakushi Gen did not look at the documents.
"It was called 'Shin-san's Beginner Dungeon Course,' wasn't it?"
Looking down at the city from his company's building, the fifty-five-year-old chairman gave a derisive chuckle deep in his throat.
"I don't know who this nobody is, but some washed-up explorer is probably lecturing amateurs. Amateurs can't tell a meaningful figure from a merely unusual one, so they're making a fuss. They'll get bored and disappear within a month."
"But the wiki revision is already causing real damage to the industry—"
"We're a company that gathers S-rank talent. The death rate of beginners has nothing to do with our business."
The supervisor fell silent. The documents, still unaccepted, were left on the edge of the reception table. He bowed once and left the room. —Togakushi did not know that the last page contained a sentence recommending a voiceprint comparison for the streamer "Shin."
Amateurs were merely making noise.
Togakushi Gen would eventually pay for that one sentence from that morning—with everything he had.